Consumer Thoughts

I’ve been playing with Google Voice and there is just one major thing that keeps me from switching over.

Anyone can call or text your GV number, but for outbound calls and texts it displays your real cell phone number instead. (It seems that if you reply to a text sent to your GV number, it will return through GV, but not if you initiate a new text from your phone to theirs.)

Now I know there is a workaround to make voice calls use your GV number as outgoing caller ID, but it’s a real pain. You dial your own GV number, then dial 2 and the number you want to call. (I am disregarding the other 2 workarounds because of inconvenience and expense; those workarounds include buying a smartphone that supports a GV app/site, or making phone calls/texts from your computer using the GV website.)

This is not only a nuisance – having to explain to non-technical people why a different number will show on their caller ID when you’ve already told them you have a new single number – it’s also a privacy issue for some people. Part of the benefit of Google Voice is the ability to block callers or mark them as spam. However, if you at some point forget to call or text them using the GV interface, they will have your other phone numbers and will be able to bypass your block.

Maybe some day I’ll have a smartphone that can use a GV app to get around this, but in the meantime I am not sure about switching over and having to explain to anyone new that I text that texts may come from a separate phone number.